Japanese Dominion
The 'Japanese Dominion '(日本主権; nippon shuken) was one of the 3 precursor superpowers to the United Earth Government, stemming from the Japanese archipelago. The Japanese Dominion was the largest economic, and second largest military power in the Eastern Hemisphere before World War III, and initiated the war by invading Shanghai in the People's Republic of China on the July 4th, 2109. History Modern era On March 31, 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry and the "Black Ships" of the United States Navy forced the opening of Japan to the outside world with the Convention of Kanagawa. Subsequent similar treaties with Western countries in the Bakumatsu period brought economic and political crises. The resignation of the shōgun led to the Boshin War and the establishment of a centralized state nominally unified under the Emperor (the Meiji Restoration). Plunging itself through an active process of Westernization during the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan adopted Western political, judicial and military institutions and Western cultural influences integrated with its traditional culture for modern industrialization. The Cabinet organized the Privy Council, introduced the Meiji Constitution, and assembled the Imperial Diet. The Meiji Restoration transformed the Empire of Japan into an industrialized world power that pursued military conflict to expand its sphere of influence. After victories in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Japan gained control of Taiwan, Korea and the southern half of Sakhalin.56 Japan's population grew from 35 million in 1873 to 70 million in 1935. World War I enabled Japan, on the side of the victorious Allies, to widen its influence and territorial holdings in Asia. The early 20th century saw a brief period of "Taishō democracy (1912–1926)" but the 1920s saw a fragile democracy buckle under a political shift towards fascism, the passing of laws against political dissent and a series of attempted coups. The subsequent "Shōwa period" initially saw the power of the military increased and brought about Japanese expansionism and militarization along with the totalitarianism and ultranationalism that are a part of fascist ideology. In 1931 Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria and following international condemnation of this occupation, Japan resigned from the League of Nations in 1933. In 1936, Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany and the 1940 Tripartite Pact made it one of the Axis Powers. In 1941, following its defeat in the brief Soviet–Japanese Border War, Japan negotiated the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, which lasted until 1945 with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. The Empire of Japan invaded other parts of China in 1937, precipitating the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). The Imperial Japanese Army swiftly captured the capital Nanjing and conducted the Nanking Massacre. In 1940, the Empire invaded French Indochina, after which the United States placed an oil embargo on Japan. On December 7–8, 1941, Japanese forces carried out surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor, British forces in Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong and declared war on the United States and the British Empire, bringing the United States and the United Kingdom into World War II in the Pacific. After Allied victories across the Pacific during the next four years, which culminated in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Japan agreed to an unconditional surrender on August 15. The war cost Japan, its colonies, China and the war's other combatants tens of millions of lives and left much of Japan's industry and infrastructure destroyed. The Allies (led by the United States) repatriated millions of ethnic Japanese from colonies and military camps throughout Asia, largely eliminating the Japanese empire and restoring the independence of its conquered territories. The Allies also convened the International Military Tribunal for the Far East on May 3, 1946, to prosecute some Japanese leaders for war crimes. However, the bacteriological research units and members of the imperial family involved in the war were exonerated from criminal prosecutions by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers despite calls for the trial of both groups. In 1947, Japan adopted a new constitution emphasizing liberal democratic practices. The Allied occupation ended with the Treaty of San Francisco in 1952 and Japan was granted membership in the United Nations in 1956. Japan later achieved rapid growth to become the second-largest economy in the world, until surpassed by China in 2010. This ended in the mid-1990s when Japan suffered a major recession. In the beginning of the 21st century, positive growth signaled a gradual economic recovery. On March 11, 2011, Japan suffered one of the largest earthquakes in its recorded history; this triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, one of the worst nuclear disasters in the 21st century. Neomodern era Japan re-emerged as a growing nation the early 2020s, when United Nations sanctions from World War II were lifted from the Japanese Self-Defense Force, and the National Diet amended the Japanese Constitution to validate the JSDF. As the People's Republic of China began to invade nearby island states in the pacific, Japan began to take proactive measures to defend its sovereignty, by pushing for Chinese sanctions in the United Nations, and in 2032 by attacking the Taiwanese People's Republic. After removing the Chinese-controlled government, Japan formed the Taiwanese Rebuilding Agreement with a newly formed Taiwan government to occupy the territory for 50 years, and rebuild the infrastructure of the territory, all the while defending it against further Chinese attacks. By 2040, Japan had completely overcome the slump of the 1990s thru to the 2020s, and was close to overtaking China as the economic leader of the Eastern Hemisphere. The prime minister Daisuke Abe announced the Safe New Asia plan, which was the alliance and defense of the Asian region against Chinese military aggression. The Japanese government began talks with the semi-independent Taiwanese government to acquire the territory permanently, and by 2043, had combined the Taiwanese territory into their own, forming the Japanese Dominion. Due to the public disdain for Mainland China, Taiwanese citizens were quickly adopting the Japanese culture and language, with over 85% of Taiwanese citizens identifying as culturally Japanese by 2060, and with Japanese being the main language used in business and broadcasting by 2072.